Monday, June 20, 2005

Insta-plagiarism

The whole thing is absurd on two levels. The obvious is that he bemoans that we'll be hearing more of the plagiarism story ... yet he seems to be the one bringing it up.

The more troubling to me professionally is that Reynolds, a law professor at University of Tennessee, is defending plagiarism by someone who failed a law course for plagiarism when Biden lifted several pages with a single footnote. Biden's lame excuse regarding his plagiarism was that he was a freshman law student, so he didn't know better.

Calling himself a "freshman" is misleading. Law school is graduate/professional school. In other words, you need to have a degree already in order to apply. Biden had already had four years of undergraduate school. For him to claim ignorance suggests that he was the densest student in University of Delaware history (U of D was his undergrad).

Does Reynolds really want to be in the position of publically trumpeting his laissez-faire attitude about plagiarism? If I were a student in his class, I might be tempted to see that as an invitation to cheat without fear of consequences.